I enjoyed and could relate to Ned Vizzini’s Searching for Shadow Man, about his quest to find the YA book he read in his youth that had a profound impact on him.

♦ THE HORNS OF ELFLAND.

More blasts from my past! Here are two more songs I listened to over and over again in the ’70s. Couldn’t get enough of them!

Vicki Lawrence’s “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” from 1972 (Reba McIntire did a great cover of the song in 1991).

Billy Paul’s “Me and Mrs. Jones,” again from 1972 (I also really like Michael Bublé’s cover, with a little assistance from Emily Blunt).

♦ TURN THE PAGE.

Is Twitter poetry a thing? If Frank Bidart’s Twitter poem for Farrar, Strauss & Giroux is any indication, I may have to reconsider my aversion to Twitter…..

Joe Hill interviews Neil Gaiman about The Ocean at the End of the Lane (which includes a recipe for lemon pancakes, by the by). I’m very much looking forward to reading the novel. You can read the prologue to the novel here, and below is another video of Gaiman reading from The Ocean at the End of the Lane:

And more Gaiman: his top 10 mythical characters (we share many favorites, though I’d have Arianrhod, Hades, Kali, and Persephone on my list, too).

Oh, the intersection of food and technology: YO! Sushi is experimenting with the first flying tray to deliver food to customers:

Famed for being the first Sushi chain in the UK to deliver food to customers on a conveyor belt, we have now gone one-step further with the introduction of the world’s first flying tray to deliver the YO! Burger to YO! Sushi lovers.

The ‘iTray’, which is now being trialled at YO! Sushi Soho with a view to rolling it out across the UK next year, is a high-tech flying platter custom built using the most advanced RC Drone quadicopter technology and is remote controlled through an on-board Wi-Fi system and iPad software.

The gadget is made from a light-weight carbon fibre frame and consists of four propellers making it incredibly nippy. Two built-in HD cameras allow YO! Sushi kitchen staff to check that the new burger range is delivered through a real time video broadcast viewable on an iPad screen.

Developed by our Executive Chef, Mike Lewis, after spending a considerable amount of time researching different regional foods in Japan, the YO! Burger removes the greasy stodgy bun and beef patty and replaces it with innovative buns made from the highest quality Japanese toasted rice and a range of five fillings – teriyaki chicken, kimchi salmon, prawn katsu, tilapia katsu fish and tofu katsu.

Each YO! Burger is served on a beautiful bespoke Japanese bento tray and is accompanied by a palate cleansing pickled daikon slaw, nori crackers in place of fries and instead of ketchup, misochup. Perhaps the best part is that the burgers deliver a maximum of 423 calories for the whole meal, making the bento tray the healthiest burger-combo ever.

Zombie Burger + Drink Lab in Des Moines, Iowa, has created The Walking Ched burger, which sounds like both heaven and hell but still I want to go to there. According to the Zombie Burger menu, The Walking Ched is a double burger with a breaded, deep-fried macaroni & cheese bun (“bun”?), plus bacon, cheddar cheese, caramelized & raw onion, macaroni & cheese, and mayo. Feast your eyes on this monstrosity! (Via)

The Walking Ched at Zombie Burger

♦ THE NINTH ART.

Go read Post by Molly Brooks right now! It’s a short webcomic (her MFA thesis comic) “about a courier who falls in love with a beautiful lady scientist after being hired to deliver a series of anonymous love notes to her isolated workshop.” The comic is lovely, and I enjoyed it so much I ordered a paperback copy!

Mighty fine mash-ups last week from Super-Team Family, including these two darlings:

and for Fara:

The Beat also has a preview of OGN Avengers: Endless Wartime, written by Warren Ellis with art by Mike McKone and colors by Jason Keith. So sayeth The Beat: “The book is intended for both new and existing readers and features an Avengers lineup more similar to the one from the film—while adding a new characters like Captain Marvel and Wolverine to the mix, which they may never see in the film universe. The story, Ellis says, was inspired by military drones as a kicking off point.” I kind of like the behind-the-scenes, slice-of-life opening, but I suspect many readers may find it a bit boring.

Check out a preview of Jordan Mechner’s graphic novel Templar, illustrated by LeUyen Pham and Alexander Puvilland, over at Tor.com, which describes the book thus: “Martin is one of a handful of Templar Knights to escape when the king of France and the pope conspire to destroy the noble order. The pope and king aim to frame the Templars for heresy, execute all of them, and make off with their legendary treasure. That’s the plan, anyway, but Martin and several other surviving knights mount a counter-campaign to regain the lost treasure of the Knights Templar.”

Criterion shared 12 more title designs they love, including the one below for Howards End. Do you also love these title designs? In addition to the title design for Howards End, I’m also quite fond of the titles for La Belle et la Bête, Hunger, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Royal Tenenbaums.

Some movie trailers for you: first up is a not-new trailer for R.I.P.D., which opens next month. The film’s based on Peter M. Lenkov’s comic book, Rest In Peace Department.

Elysium has a great concept—“Set in the year 2159, where the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth, a man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds.”—plus Jodie Foster!

I’m charmed by the trailer for Lake Bell’s In A World…: “An underachieving vocal coach is motivated by her father, the king of movie-trailer voice-overs, to pursue her aspirations of becoming a voiceover star. Amidst pride, sexism and family dysfunction, she sets out to change the voice of a generation.”

I’ll admit it: I love to see Keanu Reeves working. You’ll just have to sue me. But I’m not sure what to think of this trailer for Man of Tai Chi.

Speaking of film trailers I’m not entirely sure what to think of, here’s the first trailer for 300: Rise of an Empire. Now, I think the trailer looks beautiful, which is the same reason I liked the original 300, but I already have some reservations about the content….

"How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, trans. M.D. Herter Norton